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Stormy Weather
Mar. 3rd, 2018 09:16 amWeirdest storm ever. High winds: Electricity kept flickering on and off, off and on. Snowed for ten hours straight, gigantic flakes of snow; but because the temps were above freezing, very little of it stuck in the form of snow. Instead, the flakes turned into ten inches of something roughly the consistency of a 7/11 slushie the minute it hit the ground.
Periodically, I waded out in the slush to survey my car.
Benito Snowdrop, who parks his car next to mine, joined me.
###
I live on a road called White Oaks, and the road is overgrown with – yup, you guessed it! Oak trees!
Not the majestic, wide barreled oaks that live in enchanted forests.
No, the oaks on White Oaks Road are scraggley specimens that have grown enormously tall because they are so crowded together. They don’t really have a root systems adequate to protect their height.
I usually park my car under one of these oaks.
And yesterday, that tree was dancing in the wind like an acid-zoned hippie at a Grateful Dead concert.
###
.
In 2012, I was living on Long Island in a suburban development my pal BB nicknamed “Ganeshopolis”. (Long story.) At the very start of Hurricane Sandy, I was standing by a window when an impossible thing happened: A huge old tree across the street, whose trunk measured the span of several ring-around-the-rosy children, came toppling dreamily down while I watched. It seemed to fall in slow motion.
“It can’t possibly come down,” Benito said. “Can it?”
“Oh, it can,” I said.
When you looked at the tree from my car, it seemed likely that if/when the tree fell, it would not take out my car.
But when you looked at the tree from the house – which is what I spent most of yesterday doing, in a kind of heightened OCD trance, monitoring every littlest tremor of its slush-laden branches – it seemed like the tree was gonna smash right down on my little Saturn.
“Well, you’re gonna buy a new car anyway, right?” Benito asked jauntily.
“Maybe,” I said.
Because my car is so old, I don’t carry collision insurance.
And I wasn’t keen on moving the car away from the tree to higher ground because in order to do that, I would have to steer it through ten inches of slush, and it doesn’t have front wheel drive.
But finally, I thought, This is ridiculous; you gotta do what you gotta do.
Got in the car.
Drove it ver-r-r-y slowly up the hill to safe parking.
Which wasn't easy.
All night long, the winds continued to howl.
But here it is morning, and the tree is still standing.
It’s definitely more bent than it used to be, though.
And trees all around it are down.
###
Since the Internet was problematic, I couldn’t really work.
So I read more Scott Spencer.
I really like the way Scott Spencer writes.
While I was reading the second to the last chapter of River Under the Road, I realized this is at least partially because Scott Spencer’s writing style reminds me an awful lot of an author called Don Carpenter whose novels I once loved.
You couldn’t find a novel by Don Carpenter now. He’s long out of print, and even the moldy stacks of the Hyde Park library have given up on him.
What was the name of that novel about drifters in Portland pool halls? (Yes, Portlandia fans, not so very long ago, Portland was a really seedy place.)
I can’t remember.
Anyway, it was brilliant, as were the handful of other novels Carpenter wrote, mixing vignettes harvested from a third-tier career in Hollywood with street observations in this amazing detached and lyrical voice.
Spencer has a scene in River Under the Road in which the protagonist ends up sabotaging his screenwriting career by tossing a drink in a really annoying poseur’s face, and everything about the scene – the pacing, the dialogue, the Fellini-esque tone – reminded me of Carpenter.
Carpenter committed suicide some time in the 1990s.
###
The Meezer is sick again.
More bladder stuff.
I am not going to spend the big buck$ bringing her into a vet.
She’s 20 years old. She doesn't appear to be in any pain; she's just indiscriminate about where she pees. Sooner or later, whether I like it or not, whether I pay big buck$ to the vet or not, she’s gonna kick this popsicle stand.
So-o…
I’m doing what I did last time she got a bladder infection.
Segregate her in her carrying case – which is decked out with warm things for her to nest in – acidify her drinking water with Vitamin C, feed her kidney formula cat food. And wait and see.
It’s making me sad, though.
I hope the Meezer realizes she's not being punished. That she's being given a safe space.
But I'm not sure she does.
Periodically, I waded out in the slush to survey my car.
Benito Snowdrop, who parks his car next to mine, joined me.
###
I live on a road called White Oaks, and the road is overgrown with – yup, you guessed it! Oak trees!
Not the majestic, wide barreled oaks that live in enchanted forests.
No, the oaks on White Oaks Road are scraggley specimens that have grown enormously tall because they are so crowded together. They don’t really have a root systems adequate to protect their height.
I usually park my car under one of these oaks.
And yesterday, that tree was dancing in the wind like an acid-zoned hippie at a Grateful Dead concert.
###
.
In 2012, I was living on Long Island in a suburban development my pal BB nicknamed “Ganeshopolis”. (Long story.) At the very start of Hurricane Sandy, I was standing by a window when an impossible thing happened: A huge old tree across the street, whose trunk measured the span of several ring-around-the-rosy children, came toppling dreamily down while I watched. It seemed to fall in slow motion.
“It can’t possibly come down,” Benito said. “Can it?”
“Oh, it can,” I said.
When you looked at the tree from my car, it seemed likely that if/when the tree fell, it would not take out my car.
But when you looked at the tree from the house – which is what I spent most of yesterday doing, in a kind of heightened OCD trance, monitoring every littlest tremor of its slush-laden branches – it seemed like the tree was gonna smash right down on my little Saturn.
“Well, you’re gonna buy a new car anyway, right?” Benito asked jauntily.
“Maybe,” I said.
Because my car is so old, I don’t carry collision insurance.
And I wasn’t keen on moving the car away from the tree to higher ground because in order to do that, I would have to steer it through ten inches of slush, and it doesn’t have front wheel drive.
But finally, I thought, This is ridiculous; you gotta do what you gotta do.
Got in the car.
Drove it ver-r-r-y slowly up the hill to safe parking.
Which wasn't easy.
All night long, the winds continued to howl.
But here it is morning, and the tree is still standing.
It’s definitely more bent than it used to be, though.
And trees all around it are down.
###
Since the Internet was problematic, I couldn’t really work.
So I read more Scott Spencer.
I really like the way Scott Spencer writes.
While I was reading the second to the last chapter of River Under the Road, I realized this is at least partially because Scott Spencer’s writing style reminds me an awful lot of an author called Don Carpenter whose novels I once loved.
You couldn’t find a novel by Don Carpenter now. He’s long out of print, and even the moldy stacks of the Hyde Park library have given up on him.
What was the name of that novel about drifters in Portland pool halls? (Yes, Portlandia fans, not so very long ago, Portland was a really seedy place.)
I can’t remember.
Anyway, it was brilliant, as were the handful of other novels Carpenter wrote, mixing vignettes harvested from a third-tier career in Hollywood with street observations in this amazing detached and lyrical voice.
Spencer has a scene in River Under the Road in which the protagonist ends up sabotaging his screenwriting career by tossing a drink in a really annoying poseur’s face, and everything about the scene – the pacing, the dialogue, the Fellini-esque tone – reminded me of Carpenter.
Carpenter committed suicide some time in the 1990s.
###
The Meezer is sick again.
More bladder stuff.
I am not going to spend the big buck$ bringing her into a vet.
She’s 20 years old. She doesn't appear to be in any pain; she's just indiscriminate about where she pees. Sooner or later, whether I like it or not, whether I pay big buck$ to the vet or not, she’s gonna kick this popsicle stand.
So-o…
I’m doing what I did last time she got a bladder infection.
Segregate her in her carrying case – which is decked out with warm things for her to nest in – acidify her drinking water with Vitamin C, feed her kidney formula cat food. And wait and see.
It’s making me sad, though.
I hope the Meezer realizes she's not being punished. That she's being given a safe space.
But I'm not sure she does.
